Superstorm Sandy may have sent some migratory birds to Florida seeking food

Sanitation workers shovel snow from Queens Blvd. during a snow storm Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2012, in New York. Coastal residents of New York and New Jersey faced new warnings to evacuate their homes and airlines canceled hundreds of flights as a new storm arrived Wednesday, only a week after Superstorm Sandy left dozens dead and millions without power. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Photo courtesy of The Conservancy of Southwest Florida
Razorbill Auks have been seen in Southwest Florida waters where they aren't normally found. Residents have been finding the birds dead or near death along the coastline and bringing them to The Conservancy of Southwest Florida for treatment. Unfortunately, the birds don't do well, even under medical care.

Joanna Fitzgerald

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A new breed of snowbird is showing up around Southwest Florida, pushed out of its usual wintering grounds and struggling for survival in unfamiliar territory.

They're called razorbills, a penguin-like seabird that considers traveling south for the winter to mean heading for New York and New Jersey after spending the summer in North American breeding colonies on rocky islands or cliffs scattered from Greenland to Maine.

This year, though, razorbills just kept flying south in a never-before-seen migration pattern that has bird experts buzzing and Florida bird watchers rushing for their identification guides.

"It's an amazing event," said Andy Kratter, ornithology collection manager at the Florida Museum of Natural History. "It's exciting but it's very sad."

That's because many of the razorbills are ending up dead in Florida. Florida wildlife rehabilitation clinics have collected at least 65 dead razorbills to be sent to Kratter for the museum's collection and for analysis to try to determine what's killing them.

Experts say it's probably all about food, or rather a lack of it.

While razorbills look like penguins, they belong to a different scientific order and family. Razorbills can fly; penguins are flightless. Most penguins live in the southern hemisphere, prompting some to nickname razorbills the "penguins of the north."

Using their wings to dive underwater, razorbills feed mainly on schooling fish such as herring and on crustaceans and marine worms that live in cold northern Atlantic waters, or at least they usually do.

When Hurricane Sandy slammed ashore in late October, the superstorm likely also tore through the marine food chain, making it more difficult for razorbills to find enough to eat. Others have theorized that warmer North Atlantic waters have made them less productive.

Razorbills' survival instincts kicked in. They headed south looking for food, possibly by the thousands and most of them young birds hatched in last summer's banner breeding season, another possible complicating factor to the food search, Kratter said.

And they're still moving, Kratter said.

He said razorbills began showing up Dec. 10 in Northeast Florida and since then have been tracked heading farther south, around the tip of Florida and then up to the Florida Panhandle.

Bird watchers counted up to 600 razorbills in one day off of Miami, a remarkable sight given that before this year there had been only 14 recorded sightings of the seabirds in all of Florida's recorded bird-watching history, Kratter said.

Dead or sick razorbills have been coming to the Conservancy of Southwest Florida's von Arx Wildlife Hospital and to the Clinic for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife (CROW) on Sanibel Island since Dec. 18. As of last week, the total tally stood at 21, only two of which were still alive.

Joanna Fitzgerald, director of the Conservancy's wildlife hospital, said those that arrive alive are emaciated and weak. They're not biting or trying to get away, she said.

"They're just sitting in your hand, exhausted," she said.

At CROW on Sanibel, wildlife workers haven't seen a razorbill since Dec. 26, first responder Gareth Johnson said last week. The clinic also has seen three black scoters since November, another rare bird species for Southwest Florida, he said.

"They are in a similar boat as the razorbills," Johnson said.

Kratter, at the Florida Museum of Natural History, said he doesn't expect razorbills to make a habit of making the trip to Florida each winter.

The warmer waters in Florida makes for more diverse marine species than in razorbills' usual habitat, but the schools of fish are much smaller than the ones found in North Atlantic foraging grounds, Kratter said.

That makes it tougher for razorbills to get enough food and makes Florida more of a death trap than a paradise.

"If they keep doing this every year, they won't be around for long," Kratter said.